10/23/2011 This Way Out

NewsWrap: In an interesting confluence of Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a disabled lesbian U.S. Navy veteran who legally married her partner in Connecticut is suing for the same disability payment increases automatically given to newly-married heterosexuals, while legislation to repeal DOMA is scheduled for a Senate Judiciary Committee vote in November, and some 200 lesbian and gay active duty troops, veterans and civilian supporters gather in Las Vegas for an OutServe-organized first-ever military leadership summit for out personnel; the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear the appeal of a gay couple who were denied having both names on their adopted son's revised birth certificate; the rightwing coalition group opposed to California's FAIR Education Act, which mandates age-appropriate LGBT-inclusive history lessons in the state's public schools, fails to gather the number of petition signatures required to put a referendum on the ballot, while the Los Angeles-based Love Honor Cherish initiates the process to put a measure to repeal California's marriage equality-banning Proposition 8 on the November 2012 ballot after the state's biggest LGBT advocacy group, Equality California, decides not to; Poland elects Anna Grodzka as its first transgender lawmaker, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) ordains Rev. Scott Anderson as its first openly-gay pastor; four of the nine South African men originally charged with the brutal rape and killing of 19-year-old Cape Town lesbian Zoliswa Nkonyana are convicted of murder after more than five years of court delays; hundreds of thousands mix celebration and politics in Rio de Janeiro's 16th annual Pride parade; and under-15-year-olds are barred from attending gay entertainer Ricky Martin’s concert in Tegucigalpa to protect the mental health of Honduran youth (written by GREG GORDON, with thanks to REX WOCKNER, produced by STEVE PRIDE, and reported this week by JOHN TORRES and ROBERT LEBLANC)

It seemed somehow appropriate that FRANK KAMENY should die peacefully in his sleep in his Washington, D.C. home on National Coming Out Day, October 11th. He was 86 years old. A RAINBOW MINUTE profiles the trailblazing equality activist (produced by JUDD PROCTOR BRIAN BURNS at WRIR-FM in Richmond, Virginia and ready by DUSTIN RICHARDSON); Kameny tells how to respond to morality based bigotry [with thanks to JOHN FRAME]; he discusses the beliefs that drove his activism during a 1975 conversation with RONALD GOLD on WBAI-FM in New York City [with thanks to the PACIFICA RADIO ARCHIVES]; and out news commentator RACHEL MADDOW eulogizes Kameny on her weeknight MSNBC program.